I have been through Galena on a bike many times but this was the first time I was riding specifically to spend some time in Galena off the bike. Some may call Galena a quaint little town with lots of history; some call it a tourist trap. Galena is located in the hilly part of Illinois, the area referred to as the Driftless Zone.
Actually Galena wasn’t in the plans this weekend. We were supposed to spend Saturday and Sunday riding dirt in Iowa, but the forecast for Sunday was a lot of rain and we didn’t feel like towing the bikes to Iowa just to ride one day. With Sunday being rained out we had all day Saturday to ride, the rain wasn’t supposed to move in to Chicagoland until late Saturday night.
Main Street in Galena
It gets pretty busy here on the weekends
We arrived in town at noon. Even on a cloudy day as today, the town was still busy with tourists and we had a heck of a time finding a parking spot. After two passes through the town’s main street, we finally found a spot. By the time we secured our gear and found a restaurant we wanted to eat lunch at, it was already 1:30PM.
We ordered our food and waited at least 20 minutes for it to arrive at our table. The place wasn’t even that busy. Meanwhile the drizzle started outside the windows. I had some more nice roads planned after lunch and I was really hoping that rain wasn’t arriving early. Lunch was pretty good, although even the pubs were not very cheap here. The drizzle didn’t last very long and by the time we finished lunch it was pretty much over, so we decided to take a short walk. We stopped in at one store and then climbed a bunch of stairs to check out the view form the top. That was a workout, especially wearing motorcycle gear.
(For the ride report and road info, see previous post. )
3 comments:
Really great photos in these two posts. Thanks for all the effort!
Great colors, trees and blooms. Thanks for all the updates and photos
Neat-looking town! I love the photo with the trolly and old pickup truck.
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